Our first stop in the state of Saxony is in the city of Dresden. Here is a view of the inside of Dresden railway station which I took during my 1987 visit of East Germany.
Dresden of course was subjected to the allied carpet bombing at the end of World War II and much of the historic centre was destroyed (not to mention 100's of thousands of people). Although much of it has been rebuilt since, in 1987 the destruction was still visible. One of my most vivid memories is of an international group of about 20 of us going to a cellar bar, the top floors of which were just a pile of rubble. As beer in the old GDR was classed as basic food, and therefore subsidised, it was dirt cheap, about 50 East Pfennigs for half a litre. At that price about half the group decided to buy a round for everybody at the same time and about 200 beers turned up on our table. It turned into quite a jolly night...
I'm sure Dresden has changed somewhat since then as is also evidenced by the international flavour of music emanating from the city. Arabic jazz band Masaa are based here and includes musicians from Germany Lebanon and Israel. Here's a song from their 2020 album Irade called Fadai:
Next stop is the city of Leipzig, which I also visited back in 1987. I haven't been since, but at the time it certainly hadn't been as sympathetically restored as Dresden, with many socialist style functional buildings. This is a display window of a shoe shop from back then. The caption reads: "Men must go dancing".
Leipzig was the home of one of East Germany's first and best known folk bands called Folkländer. Established by some students in 1976 they went through various personnel and name changes including Folkländers Bierfiedler and finally just Bierfiedler until they finally disbanded in 2008. The original name was a pun on Vogtländer, because 2 of the original members were from the Vogtland, a historical region covering parts of Bavaria, Thuringia and Saxony. Some of their songs are sung in the Vogtland dialect. Initially they sang inoffensive songs from the romantic era, but later increasingly used more political material, which could have been interpreted as Socialist in the real sense or as criticism of the real conditions in the GDR. It got them into trouble as their folk opera Die Boten des Todes (The Messengers of Death) was banned in 1982. In 2018 a compilation album of some of their songs was published under the title Wenn man fragt, wer hat's getan... (When one asks, who did it...). This is a song from the album called Der Desserteur (The Deserter):
Finally we move on to East Frisia in the far northwest of Germany. The East Frisians are the butt of jokes in Germany, much like the Irish in England or the Belgians in the Netherlands and France. East Frisia has its own dialect of Low German, which is undecipherable to other Germans and has more in common with the Scandinavian languages and Dutch. Folk band Malbrook started originally from a one album project of the same name by Emden native Wolfgang Meyering in 2004, but their success encouraged them to carry on as a touring band, which includes violinist Vivien Zeller (of Trad Töchter) and harpist Merit Zloch (of Harfenduo Zirla), both of whom we have already met in Berlin. Malbrook's music is a mixture of northern German and Scandinavian folk. Their name in East Frisian translates as Mad Trousers and is a term to describe a person dancing like mad. Here is a song from their original album called Winterleed (Winter song), in line with the the weather outside my window today:
That's it from the 2 Saxonies, next up the cities of Bremen and Hamburg, which might feature some music by myself even... Until then you can follow my virtual ramblings on my Tripline map.
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